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Dispositional Hardiness And Women’S Well-Being Relating To Gender Discrimination: The Role Of Minimization, Mindi D. Foster, Kenneth L. Dion

Psychology Faculty Publications

Three studies examined whether personality-based hardiness would be associated with mental health benefits in contexts of gender discrimination. Hardy women encountering both a laboratory simulation and a hypothetical scenario of discrimination showed greater self-esteem and less negative affect than low hardy women. However, these benefits were mediated by the use of specific attributions, suggesting that the well-being in hardy women may have been achieved through minimizing the pervasiveness of discrimination. Study three showed this mediation pattern occurred only for participants exposed to higher threat scenarios versus lower threat scenarios of discrimination. Thus, minimizing the pervasiveness of discrimination may have been …

Personal And Interpersonal Predictors Of Worry In Male And Female High School Students, Barbara Anne Davis

Masters Theses

This study identified which among several factors would best predict the tendency to worry in male and female adolescents. The potential predictors were divided into two different categories: personal and interpersonal factors. Personal factors included perfectionism, self-consciousness, and locus of control. Interpersonal factors included parental attachment, parenting style, and peer attachment.

Participants in the study completed several scales that measured the predictors. The data were then analyzed to determine the relative contribution of each factor in predicting worry, and to specify the factors that best predict worry. Gender differences in worry levels and in how the factors predicted worry were …

The Role Of Prefrontal Theta Reset In Learning And Memory, Stephen W. Smith '03

Honors Projects

Theta reset, in which the rhythmic firing of neurons stops and then restarts to the onset of a stimulus, is believed to improve encoding and retrieval of stimuli by causing stimuli to be time-locked to waves of depolarization in the HPC. Recent research by Williams et al. (in preparation) has demonstrated that, in rats, theta reset occurs 1) in several cortical areas including the anterior cingulate (AC), 2) occurs during different phases of a working memory task for different cortical areas, and 3) can be predictive of working memory task performance. In the current study, human participants received EEG recording …

Semantic Role Parsing: Adding Semantic Structure To Unstructured Text, Sameer Pradhan, K. Hacioglu, W. Ward, James H. Martin, D. Jurafsky

Psychological Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

There is an ever-growing need to add structure in the form of semantic markup to the huge amounts of unstructured text data now available. We present the technique of shallow semantic parsing, the process of assigning a simple WHO did WHAT to WHOM, etc., structure to sentences in text, as a useful tool in achieving this goal. We formulate the semantic parsing problem as a classification problem using support vector machines. Using a hand-labeled training set and a set of features drawn from earlier work together with some feature enhancements, we demonstrate a system that performs better than all other …

What Archetypes Of Representation Do Children Between The Ages Of Four And Seven Employ When Creating Route Maps Of Familiar Interior Spaces?, Christine G. Price

Educational Studies Dissertations

This study investigated the symbols of representation young children choose to incorporate when they draw route maps of familiar interior spaces, based on the premise that development of map-making skills might unfold in much the same stage-like manner as the development of the ability to draw the human figure. In this investigation, children between the ages of 4 and 7 enrolled in a small independent elementary school were each asked to draw a map showing the route a person unfamiliar to the school would take to travel from the child's classroom to the school gymnasium. Strategies during map-making were noted; …

The Direction Of Memory For Music For Popular And Novel Songs, Susan Rose Sibma

Theses : Honours

Previous research on memory for music has typically measured participants' reaction times (RTs) and accuracy in tests of recall and recognition of songs presented to them. The current study was interested in what occurs during the time that elapses between stimulus onset and the generation of a response. It has been suggested that people sing or hum to themselves as they search for an answer (Rubin, 1977), but a question that has been overlooked to date is in what direction this occurs. As music unfolds in time, it was proposed that in memory for music, 'forward is best'. In the …

Rogerian Rhetoric As Negotiation: Does Its Dependence On Game Theory Pose Ethical Problems?, Stacy Fussell Thorne

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In the war game Diplomacy, players win by gaining control of Europe. In order to win, however, players must successfully negotiate with other players, make alliances with them, and sometimes gain the support of their ally's military resources, their armies or fleets. In the rules of the game, Diplomacy is described as

a game of negotiations, alliances, promises kept, and promises broken. In order to survive, a player needs help from others. In order to win the game, a player must eventually stand alone. Knowing whom to trust, when to trust them, what to promise, and when …

Proactive Personality And The Big Five As Predictors Of Motivation To Learn, Jonathan E. Turner

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

In an environment of changing psychological contracts, corporate downsizing, and increases in alternative self-paced training delivery channels, motivation to learn is believed to represent a key variable in employee self-development that distinguishes employees who will thrive from those who will not. Predicting this variable, then, becomes an important step in managing workforce development and helping employees help themselves. Therefore, the efficacy of relevant personality characteristics as predictors of motivation to learn was investigated. Proactive personality and the Big Five factors of personality were hypothesized to be predictive of motivation to learn. These personality variables are relevant because they have been …

Recent Jewish Immigrants' Communication In Postville, Iowa: A Case Study, Anna I. Levina

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

For this paper the author researched Iowa's immigration history and modern day Postville, a small town that represents a tossed salad of cultural, religious, and linguistic diversities. The author analyzed the current effect of immigration as well as the process of integration and assimilation into the small town through the eyes of its immigrants. The major emphasis is placed on Postville located in northeast Iowa. For 150 years Postville was an all-white, all-Christian farming community of 1,000 souls, most of European ancestry. Today the population of Postville has doubled and of the 2,000 people who reside in Postville almost one …

Prediction Of Mental Health Treatment Outcome In Asian American College Students, Jamie Michelle Pitzman

Masters Theses

The current study aimed to examine the relationship between presenting problems and treatment outcome among Asian American college students compared to non-Asian students. The present study also provides information about the relationship between treatment outcome and the following types of demographic and treatment related variables: age, gender, ethnic status, year in school, religion, marital status, parents' marital status, referral source, previous counseling, medical problems, and family history of medical, emotional, or substance abuse problems. Data for this study were obtained from an existing database from an East Coast university counseling center. The entire sample consisted of 173 males and 271 …

The Phenomenon Of Woman-On-Woman Abuse And Its Relationship To Gender Profile And Personal Experiences Of Women, Deborah Johnson Spence

Dissertations

Purpose of the Study. Female-on-female aggression is often inferred, or drawn from studies conducted with children or males. Little or no information is available that reports behaviors perceived as mistreatment or abuse among women. The purposes of this study were to investigate (a) behaviors demonstrated by women that women consider abuse or mistreatment; (b) the extent to which these perceptions of abuse/mistreatment were related to gender profiles; and (c) the extent to which personal experiences as victims or perpetrators of abuse were related to age, race, and education.

Method. This study used the survey research method in which questionnaires …

The Inability To Ignore Auditory Distractors As A Function Of Visual Task Perceptual Load, Donald J. Tellinghuisen, Erin J. Nowak

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Using a response competition paradigm, we investigated the ability to ignore target response-compatible, target response-incompatible, and neutral visual and auditory distractors presented during a visual search task. The perceptual load model of attention (e.g., Lavie & Tsal, 1994) states that task-relevant processing load determines irrelevant distractor processing in such a way that increasing processing load prevents distractor processing. In three experiments, participants searched sets of one (easy search) or six (hard search) similar items. In Experiment 1, visual distractors influenced reaction time (RT) and accuracy only for easy searches, following the perceptual load model. Surprisingly, auditory distractors yielded larger distractor …

Storying The Body : Women's Narratives Through The Lens Of Breast Cancer, Janet A. Griffin

Theses : Honours

What can women's narratives contribute to our understanding of breast cancer and to feminist theories of the body? This thesis explores the meanings women construct to make sense of embodied experiences of breast cancer, and the profound experience of breast loss. Rich contextual data was elicited from in depth, guided conversations with five premenopausal women who have undergone mastectomy. Adopting feminist methodology, biographic-narrative was used to place the body at the heart of inquiry. This thesis explores the personal and theoretical meanings of mastectomy, embedded in the larger story of how these five women experience their breasts, throughout their lives. …

Evaluation Of The Picture Exchange Communication System, Anne Rena Cummings

Masters Theses

The Picture Exchange Communication Systems (PECS) is a picture-based augmentative communication method that is widely accepted and utilized across children with a variety of disabilities. Despite its extensive dissemination, there is a dearth of empirically based support to document the effectiveness of PECS. The current study is the first to experimentally evaluate the effects of training during each of the 6 phases of PECS. Results indicated that with all 7 participants, the level of PECS responses consistently increased only after training was completed in Phases 1 through 4. In addition, all of the participants showed an increase in PECS responses …

Brain Potentials Elicited By Prose-Embedded Linguistic Anomalies, Mark D. Allen, Kayo Inoue, Judith Mclaughlin, Lee Osterhout

Faculty Publications

Linguistic theories distinguish between syntax (sentence form) and semantics (sentence meaning). Correspondingly, recent studies have shown that syntactic and semantic anomalies elicit distinct changes in the event-related brain potential (ERP). However, these results have been obtained with highly artificial methodologies and have not yet been generalized to more natural reading conditions. Here, we recorded ERPs while subjects read a naturalistic prose passage. The subjects either read for comprehension with no other task being assigned or read for comprehension and made acceptability judgments after each sentence. Consistent with prior work and regardless of the subjects’ assigned task, syntactic anomalies elicited a …

The Use Of Psychological State Terms By Late Talkers At Age 3, Eliza Carlson Lee, Leslie Rescorla

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

The use of psychological state words during mother-child play sessions at age 3 was examined in 31 children diagnosed with delayed expressive language at 24-31 months and 21 age-matched typically developing comparison children. Children and mothers in the late talker group made more references to physiological states and fewer references to cognitive states than the children and mothers in the typically developing comparison group. The children's use of cognitive terms correlated significantly with measures of language ability, including mean length of utterance, Index of Productive Syntax score, and use of propositional complements, as well as with their mothers' use of …

Trends. The Psychology Of Self-Preemptive Language And Action: Iraq And Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This Trends article discusses the difficulties the Bush Administration encountered when attempting to sell the invasion of Iraq to the rest of the world. Language, action, and global perceptions are discussed.

The Effects Of Communication Modality On Teamwork Processes, Thomas D. Fletcher

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Since the onset of the digital age, organizations have been able to make use of teams of individuals distributed geographically to remain competitive. While strides have been made to understand the effectiveness of collocated teams, research has yet to sufficiently explore the effects of emerging technologies on team processes and effectiveness. A laboratory study, where dyads were asked to create a spreadsheet by following a set of explicit instructions (i.e., a psychomotor task), was conducted to manipulate the communication modalities most commonly used between collaborators (i.e., face-to-face vs. audio) and compare the effects of adding a shared workspace application. The …

Differences In Perception And Number Of Incidents Of Sexual Harassment Among College Students In The United States And The Federal Republic Of Germany, Antonia Von Tobiesen

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to determine the difference between American and German students in perception and frequency of sexual harassment. The participants were female Old Dominion University psychology undergraduates and psychology students from the Universitaet Freiburg. A survey containing the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire {SEQ), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and modified questions from Gutek's (1985) Main Questionnaire (Women's Version) was used. The survey was designed to reveal sexual harassment experiences in the work environment or in the university setting, while measuring the effect of the experiences on self-esteem and the students' reactions to the incidents. The results indicated that …

The Double Edged Sword Of Disaster Psychology In The Context Of Terrorism, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes implicit assumptions, and clinical and political implications, of prescriptions for psychological services in the aftermath of terrorism-created disaster. The article is one of a series in IBPP that focuses on crisis psychology, stress management, and critical incident debriefing in an era of a United States Government (USG)-announced war on terrorism with global reach.

Trends. Husbands, Wives, And Terrorism: The Validity Of Beliefs And The Threat Of Interpretive Strategies, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses threat assessment via linguistic analysis.

The Ahimsa Acculturation Scale: A New Measure Of Acculturation For Adolescents In A Multicultural Society, C. Anderson Johnson, Paula Palmer, Jennifer B. Unger, Peggy Gallaher, Sohaila Shakib, Anamara Ritt-Olson

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Acculturation has been associated with adolescent health-risk behaviors. Most acculturation scales are inappropriate for adolescent surveys because they are too long, are not applicable to differing ethnic groups, or are language-based only. A brief, multidimensional, multicultural acculturation measure for adolescents was developed. Sixthgrade students (N = 317) in Los Angeles completed that scale and other measures of acculturation. The Acculturation, Habits, and Interests Multicultural Scale for Adolescents (AHIMSA) generates four subscores: United States Orientation (Assimilation), Other Country Orientation (Separation), Both Countries Orientation (Integration), and Neither Country Orientation (Marginalization). Three of the subscales were correlated with the subscales of a modified …

Social Intelligence: Social Skills Competence And Emotional Intelligence In Gifted Adolescents, Lisa Corso

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Two schools of thought diverge into an ongoing debate as regards to the social intelligence of gifted youth. One view holds that the gifted are often maladjusted (Chronbach, 1960; Hollingworth, 1942). The contrary view is that they are more likely to be well adjusted, with overall above average social and emotional intelligence (Allen, 2000; Chesser, 2001; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 2000; Neihart, 1999). The current research is consistent with views supporting enhanced overall social and emotional intelligence of gifted youth. Some researchers have argued that emotional intelligence and social skills competence are subsets of social intelligence (Chesser, 2000; Greenspan, 1979; Kihlstrom …

The Role Of Implicit Racial Attitudes And Universal Orientation In Cross-Racial Face Recognition, Gordon Campbell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The "other-race" effect refers to the common observation that individuals are better at remembering faces of their own race than faces of another race. The relevance of the "other-race" effect to social interaction between people of different races and eyewitness identification of criminal suspects has spurred much research into uncovering the nature of the asymmetry between recognition of own- and otherrace faces. So far, however, many attempts to consistently demonstrate factors that contribute to the "other-race" effect have failed. One of the factors that may play a role in the "other-race" effect, but has yet to be shown to do …

Reading Mastery Versus Word Study Instruction As It Pertains To Third Graders' Reading Achievement Scores, Mia Sullivan

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study was conducted in order to compare two phonics-based approaches to teaching reading. The two approaches were Reading Mastery (SRA Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, 1995) and Word Study (Bear et al. 1996). While Reading Mastery has been compared to other reading methods to examine the effectiveness of instruction with reading achievement measures, there are no studies that compare Word Study to other methods of reading instruction. The purpose of the present study was to compare Reading Mastery and Word Study instruction groups in terms of reading achievement scores. This study included 36 third grade students, 18 in each group. All students were …

Hispanic Psychology: A 25-Year Retrospective Look, Amado M. Padilla

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture

Hispanic psychology has its roots in ethnic psychology and in cross-cultural psychology. The basic premise is that it is a valuable enterprise both theoretically and empirically to study the behavior of Hispanics. Over the past 25 years, research in Hispanic psychology has given way to a new scholarship or paradigm that calls for the recognition of intragroup variation which values within-group comparisons rather than relying exclusively on between-group effects. Acculturation and biculturalism have taken on special significance in Hispanic psychology. Further, Hispanic psychology must also consider the effects of racism and oppression on people and how these affect ethnic identity, …

What Questions Arise When Studying Cultural Universals In Depression? Lessons From Abnormal Psychology Textbooks, Junko Tanaka-Matsumi, Robert Chang

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture

We examined 70 abnormal psychology textbooks published from 1920s to the present to identify consistent cross-cultural themes with regard to human depressive experiences over time and across regions of the world. The cultural and cross-cultural literature on abnormality and depression, in particular, has contributed to widening the scope of abnormal psychology textbooks over time. However, the texts are almost entirely dependent on Western diagnostic categories, particularly with regard to definitions of depression. Within the Western classification framework, authors of abnormal psychology textbooks have increasingly recognized the role of culture in depressive experiences and their communication. On the basis of our …

Directions In Gender Research In American Indian Societies: Two Spirits And Other Categories, Beatrice Medicine

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture

Indigenous social role categories that represent third and fourth gender characteristics, such as the Lakota (Sioux) winkte and the Dino (Navajo) n and other Native terms, mark the status of these individuals. However, they are often blanketed by the term, berdache, in social science literature. Contextualization in an ethnographic frame is essential to greater comprehension of these roles. A critical review of contemporary research and the writings of the Native occupants of these categories has resulted in an all encompassing term: "Two Spirits." Coterminously, Native terms for lesbians are also emerging. However, all Native gay males and lesbians have …

Bilingualism: Language, Memory And Applied Issues, Jeanette Altarriba

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture

Bilingualism, or the knowledge of more than one language, is quite prevalent throughout the world. However, much of the cognitive literature that exists on language processing and memory retrieval has included participants who are monolingual speakers. The current chapter introduces the ways in which bilingualism has been investigated in the areas of autobiographical memory, memory recall, and communication in applied settings. The notion of code-switching or language-mixing is introduced as a strategic means through which bilingual memory may be fruitfully investigated.

Are Sexual Promiscuity And Relationship Infidelity Linked To Different Personality Traits Across Cultures? Findings From The International Sexuality Description Project, David P. Schmitt

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture

Over 17,000 participants responded to self-report measures of sexuality and personality as part of the International Sexuality Description Project. It was expected that romantic relationship infidelity would be associated with the personality traits of disagreeableness and a lack of conscientiousness across most cultures. Sexual promiscuity, on the other hand, was expected to relate to extraversion across most cultures. Analyses across 58 cultures from 52 nations revealed that romantic relationship infidelity was significantly associated with disagreeableness and low levels of conscientiousness across most cultures. Sexual promiscuity was related to extraversion across many, but not most, cultural regions. The expected pattern of …